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Comment Re:Democratic? (Score 1) 278

Indeed, the economic incentives are a large reason people learn other languages. I've been learning Chinese for a while, mostly because there are so many Chinese people where I live in New Zealand and it's fun to be able to surprise them by conversing with them in Common Spoken Chinese, but there is also the economic incentive. With China's economy likely to become very influential in my life time, being able to speak Chinese is likely to be very beneficial for me.

Comment Re:Obvious bullshit (Score 1) 98

Indeed. When I was living in Fuzhou in Fujian, there was a lot of credulity everywhere unfortunately. There was a recent survey I read about on the BBC that was done in China that come out saying that Chinese people trust "chickens" (I'll assume you know what that means) more than scientists and politicians. This kind of bullshit just gives them more reason to not trust scientists.

Comment Obvious bullshit (Score 4, Insightful) 98

they say they can extract information about a child's IQ

A quick scan over the summary and spotting that set off my bullshit alarms. The genes that go in to shaping someones intelligence and IQ are likely to be multitude, and we have virtually no idea how the genes, working together, come to influence ones IQ.

Censorship

Malaysian Government Wants Internet Filtering 113

adewolf tips news that the government of Malaysia is looking into the development of an internet filtering program. According to a Reuters report, "A vibrant Internet culture has contributed to political challenges facing the government, which tightly controls mainstream media and has used sedition laws and imprisonment without trial to prosecute a blogger." The Malaysian government insists that such a filter would only be used to block pornography, though critics of the plan expect it would be wielded as a political tool, censoring websites that are critical of the current administration. "An industry source says the government could impose the filters late this year or in 2010, coinciding with the rollout of a high-speed broadband network run by Telekom Malaysia. Malaysia aims to increase broadband penetration to half of all homes by 2010 as part of its drive to boost economic efficiency."

Comment From the... (Score 5, Informative) 325

From the gpl-isn't-really-open-either-ya-know dept.

What is up with that? The majority of people that go around saying this about the GPL complain that you can't include the GPL in proprietary software or other unfortunate obscure issues. The GPL is designed to keep software licensed under it Free (or open if you prefer). Sure sometimes that causes unfortunate problems with other Free Software licenses, but while there are those that would like to take away the freedom that users and developers get with the GPL, it's a cost I'm happy with.

Businesses

Apple and the Scalability of Secrecy 155

RobotsDinner writes "Anil Dash has a thoughtful exploration of Apple's notorious devotion to secrecy, and argues that not only is there a limit to its feasibility, but that recent events show Apple has reached that limit already. 'If the ethical argument is unpersuasive, then focus on the long-term viability of your marketing and branding efforts, and realize that a technology company that is determined to prevent information from being spread is an organization at war with itself. Civil wars are expensive, have no winners, and incur lots of casualties.'"

Comment Re:from TFA (Score 1) 921

You didn't, I had simply heard of the idea of vat grown meat as being our most realistic chance of artificial meat on a scale large enough to feed everyone.
I've never heard a single thing about meat being produced by a 3D printer, didn't even know they could possibly do that, the only 3D printer I'm familiar with though is rep-rap by Vik Oliver which he showed off at a LUG meeting here in Auckland.

Comment Re:from TFA (Score 1) 921

What? The technology is not pretty much there. It would be utterly awesome if we could grow meat. I hardly eat meat, and was vegetarian for quite a while. I think that killing animals to eat them is very unethical... This is separate though from whether organic is good, which it isn't.
Organic farmed food has no more nutritional value, it is worse for the environment, it uses massive amounts of toxic pesticides (all organic approved), and it's more expensive.
Another thing, the maths shows a lot of local produce to be worse for the environment again for the energy/produce ratio.

Comment Re:from TFA (Score 1) 921

Conspiracy theory websites? They're skeptic websites, where they've actually done their research. I suppose that James Randi is now the king of conspiracy theorists? You'll notice with the first one that the website looks skeptically at things like alternative medicines, such as homeopathy, acupuncture, chiropractic, organic, etc... The second one is by this guy http://www.cse.unsw.edu.au/~lambert/ whom is also not a conspiracy theorist, if you actually read what he had said on that page you'd see that he was the one laughing at the conspiracy theorists.

Comment Re:from TFA (Score 1) 921

No, you just used emotionally loaded words instead. I know that a lot of food gets dumped though, but whether we're over-producing or simply more food than can be eaten in a certain area is being concentrated in that area rather than sensibly distributed, I'm not sure. If we can feed every country with less food than we produce and using less land, then that would be great. Our priority though I think is getting everyone properly feed first, though being sensible with the environment is pretty much of the same importance, as if we don't look after the environment we're quite likely to find ourselves unable to produce enough food... That would be a massive disaster and very horrible to have to live (or die) through.

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